I don't think so. I remember wanting to be the usual things like a teacher or a doctor. I wanted to be a majorette when I was very little. That was the height of glamour and achievement as far as I was concerned.

I can't remember a distinct moment when I decided to become a writer. I started out as a reader (still am). I love to read, and I think that most people who read a lot and love books carry in the back of their minds this idea that they would like to write a book someday. I co-wrote a story in eighth grade with my friend Laura Dorsey. It was about a prince and princess named Gabriel and Ophelia who were somehow turned into lizards. I remember thinking at the time that it was a fantastic story. Thankfully, it was lost long ago, so I can continue to remember it as being brilliantly written for the rest of my life.

I've always kept a diary or journal. I've been a reporter for small weekly newspapers. I used to write little books to give as gifts to people. I'd hand letter the pages, bind them with cardboard and fabric. Make simple illustrations. Those gift books were nice. I think the people I gave them to really liked them. So I guess writing in one form or another has been in my life for a long time.

I didn't seriously start pursuing publication until about twelve years ago. I wouldn't call myself a real go-getter. Writing at home in my jeans and an old sweater suits me incredibly well.

I write on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Mostly in the morning. I teach part-time at an elementary school, and do most of my writing on the days I don't work at school. I'm not a very disciplined person - it's a wonder I get anything written at all.

Sometimes I write after I get home from school. Mostly, though, I do a lot of avoiding writing. I'll do almost anything to delay sitting down at the computer. Vacuum. Comb the dog. Run to the grocery store. Read a magazine or stare blankly into space. I actually avoid writing as much as possible.

I saw a t-shirt recently that read, "Onward through the fog." That's basically my method. One step at a time. One foot methodically in front of the other, and you can walk as far as your imagination will take you.

Even a few words a day will add up to sentences. It's pretty amazing how the sentences add up to paragraphs add up to pages. Pretty soon there's a chapter. Get enough chapters and you've got a book. I've recently started setting a 1,000 word goal for myself. Each day that I sit down to write, I can't get up until I've written 1,000 words. That's a good chunk. Sometimes I'll trick myself into writing more than 1,000 by rounding up the word count...say I start the day with the manuscript at 35,400 words...I'll tell myself I have to get to 37,000 words. That works, too. Whatever gets the words on the page.

Writing, as I see and experience it, is for the dogged plodders among us, not necessarily for the sprinters. There are some people who sprint, but I'm more suited to steady, determined progress. A book is a marathon, and you can't always see clearly where you are going. Onward through the fog.

I suffered under the same delusion that many people do - I thought that writing for children would be easier than writing for adults. It seemed to me that I might actually be able to get my mind around a novel for children. That I could make a story arc that would work, give voice to characters, and keep a grasp on the whole, unwieldy thing. Now that I've tried it, I know that writing is difficult no matter who your intended audience is - it's really fun and rewarding, but it isn't easy. But I do think it's good that I initially believed that writing for children was easy, because it gave me the courage to begin writing, when I might not have otherwise.

Another reason I started writing for children is that I had children of my own. My older son used to collect cards with comic book characters on them. He had binders full of them. One day he was talking about how great it would be if one of these guys could come alive so they could meet. This was long before Dan Gutman's baseball books. I'd sit in the back yard while the kids played and write in a spiral notebook, then type it into the computer when I had the chance. That was twelve or thirteen years ago. I never really finished that story. I gave up somewhere in the first draft. I found out that children's novels need plot and character and conflict - just like adult novels. It was hard. I gave up.

I decided a novel was too difficult and switched to writing picture books. Surely that would be easier! Picture books are so short, after all, and they're mostly pictures! So I started to write picture books. I did this for several years. I wrote picture books about dancing vegetables and contrary two-year-olds. I wrote stories about ducks who adopted squirrels, lost socks, and about messy hermit crabs. I also finished two chapter books. And I collected rejection slips. About 120 to date, and counting! In fact, there may be a rejection letter in my mailbox right now! Picture books are not any easier than novels. They need all the things a novel does: character, conflict and a story arc, and you have to do it in very few words. It's hard. I'm not very good at picture books.

During all this time -it was ten years!-- I thought I was simply writing picture books. It certainly looked like I was writing picture books - I finished stories and sent them off to publishers. I went to writer's conferences and talked about picture books. Here's the interesting thing: I wasn't really writing picture books. I was avoiding writing a novel. I was trying to get my courage back up to write a novel without quitting writing all together. (I figured this out later, when I started writing a novel again.) Like I said before, mostly I avoid writing. I may be the only person who has avoided it for ten solid years, while still writing!

It wasn't ten wasted years, though. That was my apprenticeship. I was learning and practicing and figuring out how to write. I'm a slow learner, I guess. When I was ready, I started writing a novel. And I finished it this time.

It is discouraging to get a rejection slip in the mail. When you open the mailbox and see that envelope addressed to you in your own handwriting (you have to send a self-addressed envelope with every submission), it really stinks. Open up the envelope, and there's your manuscript, along with a form rejection letter telling you that your story isn't suited to that publisher's list. This is the standard line they use, because editors are very busy and they are also very polite. But getting one of those in the mail makes you feel like one of the faceless millions. Just one of the many hopefuls sending in manuscripts.

But for some reason this feeling doesn't last long for me. Usually by the time I've walked back to the house from the mailbox, I'm thinking toward sending the story back out again. The best remedy for rejection is hope. As long as you have manuscripts out there in the mail, you have hope. Hope springs eternal, and you can buy it at the post office!

Mostly I'd get form letters of rejection, but once in a while I'd get a form rejection with a hand-written note scrawled across the bottom. An editor took the time out of her incredibly busy, multi-tasking, eat-lunch-at-her-desk day to handwrite a note! That was enough to keep me going.

The biggest reason I didn't give up, even though I wrote stories and collected rejection slips for twelve years, is that somehow I always believed that eventually it would happen. I just knew I was going to get published. Some would call this self-delusion. I prefer to call it self-confidence.

Of course, now I know that I shouldn't have been waiting by the mailbox all those years. I should have been waiting by the phone. When a publisher wants your story, they call you.

My great-grandmother left her husband and children without warning when my grandmother was in junior high school. This was in the 1920s. I grew up hearing snippets of the story. It was not something that my grandmother often talked about. I don't think she ever really got over the hurt of her mother leaving. I heard little bits of the story here and there. That is what planted the seed for Weezie's story. It is my way of trying to tell my grandmother that she is deeply loved and worthy of being loved, despite the fact that her mother left her.

Adult readers have asked me why Ma (in the book) left. They want to know her story. But this isn't Ma's story. I don't know why Ma left. There could be a thousand reasons. I'm not sure it matters to the children who are left behind. They don't want to hear that their parent is not fulfilled in taking care of them - they just want to be cared for and loved. They desperately want to be enough to make their parents stay.

The idea of having the Bloom family live in a lighthouse - the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse on the Hudson River- came from living in upstate New York. I didn't know there were river lighthouses until I moved here. I'm very familiar with ocean and coastal lighthouses because I grew up in Maine, but river lighthouses were a surprise.

What a wonderful setting for a story! And the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse is a beautiful building. I had originally thought to have the story take place in the Esopus Meadows Lighthouse because of its wonderful nickname: Maid of the Meadows. I love that. That was going to be the title of the book, too. But that lighthouse is boarded up and has no access. There is access to the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse through tours given by the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society. So I actually got to go to the lighthouse and see it for myself. I walked through the rooms and got a feel for it, looked out across the river, climbed up to the lantern room.

I also read several newspaper articles with interviews with Emily Brunner, who lived in the lighthouse as a child. This gave me wonderful insight into living in the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse. So that pretty much clinched it.

No. It was accepted by Dutton on the first go. Dutton Children's Books held a contest to celebrate their 150th anniversary; the Ann Durell Fiction Contest. I entered the manuscript in the contest- I finished the first draft just in time to meet the entry deadline. I didn't win the contest, but I received Honorable Mention and eventually was offered a publishing contract. I was ecstatic, to say the least!

I had always imagined that being published would be wonderful, and the reality has not disappointed. I found the whole process - from acceptance, through rewriting and revising, collaborating with an editor, to proofreading and copyediting - just terrific. I have enjoyed the whole thing.

It certainly was a learning experience for me, though. I thought I was finished with the story when Dutton said they wanted to publish it. I had worked on it for three years, and I felt it was as good and complete as I could possibly make it. I couldn't see anything that needed to be added or changed. I was wrong! Acceptance was not the end, it was the beginning of working on the story.

Working with an editor was just magnificent. My editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, took me and the book and just worked magic. It is now a much better, richer book than I ever could have produced on my own. I can see why writers so often thank their editors in their acknowledgments. They don't simply "edit" in the usual sense of the word: crossing out words here and there, rearranging sentences and punctuation.

I was, and still am, in awe of the careful, very thoughtful attention that Julie gave to the manuscript, and to me as a first-time author. Although I did all of the actual writing and revising, it was a real collaboration. She never condescended to me, always made me feel that I was a professional and capable of doing the things she felt needed to be done. She wrote me pages and pages full of thoughtful insight and suggestions (which I was always free to disagree with, but which, after stewing, ah, thinking about them for a day or two, I knew were right on the mark). On the one or two occasions where I felt strongly that something wouldn't work, she graciously allowed me to convince her of my point of view. She took me and my novel seriously, and I trust her completely. So, hats off to Julie.

I'm working on a new novel. I'm close to being finished with the first draft. I'm not ready to tell you much about it, though. I'm going to paraphrase Margaret Atwood, who says don't tell nobody nothing about what you're working on - until it's something you want everybody to know. I think that means don't talk about your book until it's ready to go out into the world and speak for itself.

Who am I to disagree with Margaret Atwood? So I'm not telling nobody nothing!